Authors: Robert Bryndza
T
he light was starting
to fade when Moss and Peterson caught up with Erika in a coffee shop on Chiswick High Road. She’d spent a frustrating hour sitting by the window, watching the light fade on a day that had seemed so long, but in which she felt she’d achieved nothing. It wasn’t like her to go roaring in on an interview and balls it up – especially not with the parents of the victim.
The café had been quiet when Erika had arrived, but had now filled up and was bustling with fashionable singletons, and a pack of yummy mummies who’d marked out a corner of the coffee shop with a barrier of expensive buggies.
Peterson and Moss bought coffee and sandwiches, then came over to the table to join Erika.
‘Look, thanks for stepping in there; I don’t know what happened. My judgement was off,’ explained Erika, feeling embarrassed.
‘No probs,’ said Peterson, tearing open a sandwich box and taking a huge bite.
‘Diana Douglas-Brown was out of order, but then again, it wasn’t the best day of her life, was it?’ agreed Moss, taking a bite of her sandwich.
‘Yeah, but I shouldn’t have . . . Anyway. What else can you tell me?’ asked Erika. She waited for a moment whilst they both finished chewing.
‘Simon and Diana don’t know why Andrea was in South London,’ said Moss. ‘She’d arranged to go the cinema with David and Linda, the brother and sister. They waited for her at the Odeon in Hammersmith, but she never showed up.’
‘Were the brother and sister at home?’
‘Yeah. David, he was asleep upstairs. Lady Diana didn’t want to wake him.’
‘Wake him? Isn’t he in his twenties?’ asked Erika.
‘David had been awake since the early hours, apparently,’ said Moss. ‘They’d been taking it in turns to watch the phones throughout the night, in case Andrea called. It seems she’s gone missing before.’
‘When? Do we have a record?’
‘No. They never reported it. A couple of years back she went AWOL over a long weekend. Turned out she went off to France with some guy she’d met in a bar. She came back when she maxed out her credit card.’
‘Did you get a name of the person she ran off with?’
‘Yeah, a Carl Michaels. He was a student at the time. It was nothing dodgy. A dirty weekend, with the added bonus that Andrea had a platinum Visa card,’ said Moss.
‘Did you see the sister, Linda?’ asked Erika.
‘She came in with a tray of tea. We thought she was the maid. Looks very different to Andrea: frumpy, a bit fat. She works at the mother’s florist-s,’ said Peterson.
‘And how did she react to the news?’ asked Erika.
‘She dropped the tray, although . . .’ Moss hesitated.
‘What?’ asked Erika, wishing again that she didn’t have to hear this all second-hand.
Moss looked at Peterson.
‘It seemed a bit cod, the way she reacted,’ he said.
‘Cod?’ asked Erika.
‘You know, like bad acting. I don’t know. People react in all sorts of weird ways. The whole family seems a bit screwed up if you ask me,’ said Peterson.
‘Then again, whose family isn’t screwed up?’ added Moss. ‘Plus, you throw money into the mix and everything gets heightened.’
A phone began to ring, and it took a few moments before Erika realised it was hers. She pulled it out and answered. It was Isaac, telling her that the bad weather had slowed everything right down. The results of the autopsy would be ready in the morning.
‘I really wanted them to ID the body tonight,’ said Erika, when she came off the phone.
‘It could work in your favour. It’ll give Sir Simon a chance to cool off,’ said Peterson.
‘Did he say anything else?’ asked Erika.
‘Yeah, he wants Sparks back on the case,’ said Moss.
They carried on chewing in silence. It was now dark. Car headlights crawled past, illuminating the incessant snow falling outside.
E
rika
, Moss, and Peterson arrived back at Lewisham Row just after seven pm. They went straight to the incident room, which was full, the police officers waiting expectantly to share the day’s findings. Erika sloughed off her long leather jacket and went to the huge bank of whiteboards lining the back of the room.
‘Okay, everyone. I know it’s been a long day, but what have we got?’
‘How did you get on when you met the family? How did Sir Simon take to you, DCI Foster?’ smirked Sparks, leaning back in his chair.
On cue, Chief Superintendent Marsh pulled open the door to the incident room. ‘Foster. A word.’
‘Sir, I’m just briefing everyone on the day’s events . . .’
‘Okay. But my office, the second you’re done,’ he barked, and slammed the door.
‘So it went well, I take it?’ needled Sparks, his nasty smile tinted with the white-blue of his computer screen. Erika ignored him and turned back to the white board. Beside Andrea’s photo were pictures of Linda and David. She noticed with interest that Andrea and her brother were very attractive, but Linda was overweight and matronly, with a pointed nose and a whiter complexion than her siblings.
‘Are the kids all from the same parents?’ asked Erika, tapping the board with her marker pen. This took the incident room off guard.
Sergeant Crane looked round in surprise. ‘We assumed yes . . .’
‘Why did you assume this?’ asked Erika.
‘Well, they seemed quite . . .’
‘Posh?’ asked Erika. ‘Never forget, we look at family first and foremost as suspects. Don’t let yourselves be blinded by the fact that they live in an expensive area of London and have influence and power. Crane, you can look into the children, but of course, be discrete. Now, we know that Andrea was due to meet David and Linda at the cinema last Thursday, the eighth, but she never showed up. Where did she go? Was she meeting a friend, a secret lover? Who was looking specifically into Andrea’s life?’
A small Indian woman in her twenties stood up. ‘PC Singh,’ she said. She came to the front and Erika handed her the marker pen.
‘Andrea’s been in a relationship with twenty-seven-year-old Giles Osborne for the past eight months; they’d recently got engaged. He owns Yakka Events, an upmarket events and party planning company, based in Kensington.’
‘Yakka Events. What does
Yakka
mean?’ asked Erika.
‘It’s the aboriginal word for work. It says on the company website that he spent his gap year in Australia.’
‘Learning how to serve canapés and champagne from the aborigines?’ asked Erika. A flicker of a smile passed through the incident room.
‘He’s privately educated. Comes from a wealthy family. He has an alibi for the night Andrea went missing.’
‘I’ve already interviewed him; we found this out last week,’ interrupted Sparks.
‘What about the records for Andrea’s phone, and social media? I take it those have been requested?’
‘Yes,’ said Singh.
‘Where are they?’
‘I’m on it. I requested them this morning, so we’re hoping to get them in the next twenty-four hours,’ said Crane.
‘Why weren’t they requested before, when she became a missing person?’ asked Erika.
There was silence.
‘Worried you were prying into the lives of the influential rich people?’
‘I made the call not to go ahead and request those,’ said Sparks. ‘The family were still under the impression that Andrea had taken off somewhere; they were monitoring her social media accounts and sharing information with us.’
Erika rolled her eyes. ‘I want those records the second we have them, and anything that gets pulled off the phone hard drive,’ she said to Crane. ‘Now, Sparks, you seem full of the joys of late winter. What did you manage to find with the CCTV?’
DCI Sparks leaned back in his chair with a creak. ‘Not good news, I’m afraid. Until a couple of days ago, three of the CCTV cameras on the London Road were down. So we’ve got nothing around the train station forecourt, or leading up the high street to the Horniman Museum. Course, the back roads aren’t covered either, so we’re blind to the events on the night of the eighth.’
‘Shit,’ said Erika.
‘We have got her coming off the train at Forest Hill Station at—’ Sparks flicked through his notes ‘—9.06pm. She comes off the train, goes along the platform and leaves past the ticket office. It was unmanned, and only a couple of other people got off at the same time.’
‘Can we find out who they are? Maybe they walked up with her.’
‘I’m already on it,’ Sparks finished.
‘What about the door-to-door?’
Sergeant Crane leaned forward in his chair, saying: ‘Not a great deal, boss. Most people were either still away after their Christmas break, or asleep.’
‘What about any pubs?’
‘The Wetherspoon’s and The Pig and Whistle have CCTV; she didn’t go into either of those. There’s another four pubs on the high street.’
‘Grace Kinney mentioned two: The Glue Pot and The Stag.’
‘We’ve been to them all. Pretty rough shit-holes they are too, boss, and no one who works there remembers seeing her.’
‘Look at staff rotas, find out who the locals are. Check again. She was dressed for a night out. There’s a high chance she did go into one of those pubs.’
‘What if she was going to a house party?’ asked Singh.
‘Okay, then what about off-licences? Did she go into any to buy fags or booze?’
‘Again, the off-licences do have CCTV, tends to be patchy, but none of them saw her,’ said Crane.
‘What about outside the house where her bag was found?’
‘Yes, number forty-nine, and unfortunately, nothing again. Homeowner is a gaga old lady with a live-in carer; neither of them saw or heard anything.’
There was an uncomfortable silence.
‘Perhaps you should let your team get some rest. It’s been a long day,’ said Sparks.
‘Yeah. Okay. Let’s meet back here at nine tomorrow. We should have the autopsy results by then, and the phone and social media records.’
Erika said goodnight to her officers, and when she was the last in the incident room, she looked over the whiteboards in silence, lingering over Andrea’s picture.
‘Look at you; just twenty-three. You had your whole life ahead of you.’ Andrea stared back at her, defiantly, almost mocking her.
Erika jumped as her phone rang,
‘Do you want to keep me waiting any longer?’ barked Marsh.
‘Shit, sir, sorry. I’m on my way up.’
‘
S
o what you
’re telling me is, you’ve got nothing?’ said Marsh. He was red in the face as he paced up and down his office. Erika had just underlined the progress made during the first day of investigations.
‘This is day one, sir. And as I said, there’s a positive ID on the victim; I’ve kept it out of the press. I think there’s one or two pubs where Andrea might possibly be placed the night she vanished.’
‘
Might possibly be placed
; what does that mean?’
‘It means we’re hampered by a CCTV black spot all up the London Road and around the train station. We need time and resources to keep on at people, asking questions. Everyone has worked bloody hard, especially when the weather has slowed proceedings . . .’
‘And what the hell did you think you were doing, getting into a row with the Douglas-Browns?’
Erika took a deep breath to steady herself. ‘I admit, sir, that I should have handled the victim’s parents better.’
‘Too bloody right you should have. I thought Lady Diana would have found some common ground, with you being Slovak?’
‘Yes, well, that was the problem. She thought I was common. Not good enough to be leading the murder investigation.’
‘Yeah, well, you didn’t choose to be a police officer so people could be nice to you, DCI Foster. There is a course I can send you on – dealing with the public.’
‘That’s the problem. We’re not treating them as members of the public. In fact, is Sir Simon leading the investigation? He seems to think he’s in charge . . . Anyway who told you about what happened? He called you, did he? Knows your direct line number?’
‘You’re on thin ice, DCI Foster,’ said Marsh. ‘He called DCI Sparks, actually, who relayed the message to me.’
‘How good of him.’
Marsh shot her a look. ‘I’ve stuck my neck out on this, to get you on this case—’
‘I don’t want your pity, sir!’
‘—and if you’re not careful, you’ll be gone before you’ve even started. You need to learn how to keep your mouth shut. I got you on this case because you’re a bloody good copper. One of the best I know. Although, right now, I’m questioning my judgement.’
‘I’m sorry, sir. It’s just been a long day – tough conditions, and no sleep. But you know me, I don’t make excuses and I will find who did this.’
‘Okay,’ said Marsh, calming down. ‘But you need to apologise sincerely to the Douglas-Browns.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And get a decent night’s sleep. You look like shit.’
‘Thanks, sir.’
‘Where are you staying?’
‘A hotel.’
‘Good. Now bugger off, and come to work tomorrow with your head screwed on,’ said Marsh, waving her away.
E
rika was
furious when she left Marsh’s office; furious that she’d been given a dressing-down, and furious with herself that she’d messed up. She went back down to the incident room and grabbed her coat. Andrea’s picture stared boldly back at her from the centre of the whiteboard. The handwritten notes on the case blurred in the bright lights, and Erika rubbed her tired eyes. It felt like she was looking at everything through murky glass. She couldn’t get a handle on the details. Tiredness and anger washed over her again. She pulled on her coat and left, flicking off the light. When she came out of the incident room she met Desk Sergeant Woolf in the corridor.
‘I was just coming to tell you. We’ve sorted you a car. It’s a blue Ford Mondeo,’ he said, holding out a key fob, his jowly face more sullen that it had been that morning.
‘Thanks,’ said Erika, taking the key. They made for the main entrance, Woolf struggling a little to match her stride.
‘I didn’t put your suitcase in though; I did my back in a few years ago. Had to have a disc removed. It’s behind my desk . . .’
They emerged into the reception area, where a thin, bedraggled woman was leaning over Woolf’s desk, using his phone. She wore filthy ripped jeans, and an old parka jacket that was stained and covered in cigarette burns. Her long grey hair was tied back with an elastic band, and underneath her eyes were deep dark circles. Two unkempt little girls beside her were shrieking encouragement at a little boy with a buzz cut who sat on Erika’s suitcase. He wore a pair of stained white tracksuit bottoms and was gyrating his hips with one hand on the suitcase handle and the other in the air, like he was riding a bucking bronco. Woolf hurried behind his desk and put his finger on the phone, cutting off the call.
‘I was fuckin’ talking!’ snarled the woman indignantly, displaying a mouth of crooked brown teeth.
‘Ivy. This is a police phone,’ said Woolf.
‘Well, it ain’t rung for the past ten minutes. Think yerself lucky the criminals are having a rest!’
‘Who do you want to call? I can do it for you,’ said Woolf.
‘I know how to use a fuckin’ phone!’
‘Who is this woman?’ asked Erika.
Ivy held the receiver away from Woolf and gave Erika the once over, saying, ‘Me and Droopy go way back, don’t we Droopy? I call ‘im Droopy. Ugly fuckin’ bastard, ain’t he?’
‘You. Get off my suitcase,’ said Erika to the boy, who couldn’t have been more than seven or eight. He ignored her and carried on whooping and riding the suitcase. Woolf grappled with Ivy for the receiver, and finally managed to prise it from her grip.
‘I should be allowed to use this bloody phone. It’s only a local call and besides, I pay your wages!’
‘How do you pay my wages?’ asked Woolf.
‘I’ve got money. I pay my taxes, and that’s what pays your wages!’
Erika went to lift the little boy off her suitcase, but he leaned over and sank his teeth into the back of her hand. The intensity of the pain surprised her.
‘Let go, now,’ said Erika, trying to keep calm. He looked up at her with a nasty grin, and bit down even harder. Intense pain shot through her hand and she snapped, slapping him hard across the face. He screamed, releasing Erika’s hand, and fell off the suitcase, hitting the ground with a thud.
‘Who do you think you fuckin’ are?’ growled Ivy, lunging across at her.
Erika tried to dodge out of the way, but found herself with her back flat against the wall. Woolf caught Ivy just in time, as a long blade glinted inches from Erika’s face.
‘Ivy, now come on, just cool it . . .’ started Woolf, restraining her under the armpits, but still struggling to hold her back.
‘Don’t you tell me to cool it, you fat ugly cunt!’ said Ivy, dangerously. ‘You touch my kids and I’ll cut your face, no problem, you bitch. I’ve got nothin’ to lose.’
Erika tired to control her breathing as she saw the flick-knife inch closer to her face.
‘Let go of the knife. Let go,’ said Woolf, finally gaining a grip on Ivy’s wrist, and twisting the flick-knife out of her hand. It clattered to the floor and he put his foot over it.
‘You didn’t ’ave to be so rough, Droopy,’ said Ivy, rubbing her wrist. Woolf kept his eye on her as he leant down and retrieved the knife from the floor. He found the small release button and the blade vanished back into its handle. The little boy and two girls had ceased to be threatening and rowdy. They were just kids, and they seemed more afraid of what Ivy was going to do next. Erika couldn’t imagine the life they must lead. She looked at the little boy, who was holding the back of his head.
‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry . . . What’s your name?’
He shrank back from her. What could she say to him? That she’d had a bad day? Erika took in their filthy clothes, their malnourished bodies . . .
‘I want to make a complaint,’ said Ivy with relish.
‘Oh, do you?’ said Woolf, moving Ivy towards the main door.
‘Yeah,
police brutality
– get yer hands off me – police brutality towards a minor.’
‘You’ll need to fill in a form,’ said Woolf. ‘Before you spend a night in the cells for pulling a knife on a police officer.’
Ivy narrowed her eyes. ‘No, I haven’t got fuckin’ time . . . Come on, kids. NOW!’ She gave Erika a last look, and they followed after her through the main door. There was a flash of coats as they passed the window.
‘Shit,’ said Erika, slumping against the main desk and rubbing at the back of her hand. ‘I shouldn’t have hit that kid.’
There was a white and purple ridge of teeth marks deep in her skin, and a blur of blood mingling with the little boy’s saliva. Woolf went to a box marked
knife amnesty
where he deposited Ivy’s flick-knife. He then moved back round the desk and pulled down a first-aid kit. He placed it on the table beside Erika and opened the lid.
‘You know her?’ asked Erika.
‘Oh, yes. Ivy Norris, or Jean McArdle, Beth Crosby – sometimes she goes by Paulette O’Brien. Bit of a local celebrity.’ He poured some alcohol solution on a sterile dressing and pressed it against the back of Erika’s hand, over the bite marks. The nasty stinging sensation was contrasted by a comforting smell of mint. Woolf went on, ‘She’s a long-term drug addict, prostitute, got a record as long as the Great Wall of China. She used to do a mother-and-daughter speciality, if you know what I mean, until the daughter died of a drug overdose.’
‘And the kids’ fathers?’
‘They’re actually her grandkids, and who knows? Stick your finger in the phone book.’
Woolf removed the dressing and started to clean the bloody bite mark with a fresh one.
‘Are they homeless?’
Woolf nodded.
‘Could we get them into emergency social services, bed and breakfast?’ asked Erika. She could still see Ivy, standing in the car park smoking under the harsh lights and mouthing off to no one in particular. The kids were huddled around her, flinching as she gestured with her arms.
Woolf laughed darkly. ‘She’s banned from most of the B&Bs and hostels for soliciting.’
He lifted off the bandage and applied a large square plaster to the back of Erika’s hand.
‘Thanks,’ said Erika, flexing her fingers.
Woolf started to pack up the first aid kit. ‘Now you know what I’m going to tell you. You need to see a doctor about the bite. Get a tetanus jab, and you know . . . Street kids, not healthy.’
‘Yeah,’ said Erika.
‘And I have to log this down. Everything what happened. She pulled a knife on you. He bit you . . .’
‘Yes, and I hit him. I hit a bloody kid . . . It’s fine. Do your job, and thank you.’
He nodded, took his seat again and pulled out some paperwork. Erika turned back to look outside, but Ivy and the kids were gone.